The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories by Arnold Bennett (2013-08-08)

The Matador of the Five Towns, and Other Stories

The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories (Volume 2 of 2) (EasyRead Super Large 18pt Edition)

The Matador of the Five Towns: And Other Stories

The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories - Scholar's Choice Edition

The Matador of the Five Towns: And Other Stories - Primary Source Edition

THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS AND OTHER STORIES

by

ARNOLD BENNETT

1912

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NOVELS

A MAN FROM THE NORTHANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNSLEONORAA GREAT MANSACRED AND PROFANE LOVEWHOM GOD HATH JOINEDBURIED ALIVETHE OLD WIVES' TALETHE GLIMPSEHELEN WITH THE HIGH HANDCLAYHANGERHILDA LESSWAYSTHE CARD

FANTASIAS

THE GRAND BABYLON HOTELTHE GATES OF WRATHTERESA OF WATLING STREETTHE LOOT OF CITIESHUGOTHE GHOSTTHE CITY OF PLEASURE

SHORT STORIES

TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNSTHE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS

BELLES-LETTRES

JOURNALISM FOR WOMENFAME AND FICTIONHOW TO BECOME AN AUTHORTHE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHORTHE REASONABLE LIFEHOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAYTHE HUMAN MACHINELITERARY TASTETHE FEAST OF ST FRIEND

DRAMA

POLITE FARCESCUPID AND COMMON SENSEWHAT THE PUBLIC WANTSTHE HONEYMOON

(In Collaboration with EDEN PHILLPOTTS)

THE SINEWS OF WAR: A ROMANCETHE STATUE: A ROMANCE

CONTENTS

TRAGIC

THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNSMIMITHE SUPREME ILLUSIONTHE LETTER AND THE LIETHE GLIMPSE

FROLIC

JOCK-AT-A-VENTURETHE HEROISM OF THOMAS CHADWICKUNDER THE CLOCKTHREE EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF MR COWLISHAW, DENTISTCATCHING THE TRAINTHE WIDOW OF THE BALCONYTHE CAT AND CUPIDTHE FORTUNE-TELLERTHE LONG-LOST UNCLETHE TIGHT HANDWHY THE CLOCK STOPPEDHOT POTATOESHALF-A-SOVEREIGNTHE BLUE SUITTHE TIGER AND THE BABYTHE REVOLVERAN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS

I

Mrs Brindeley looked across the lunch-table at her husband withglinting, eager eyes, which showed that there was something unusual inthe brain behind them.

My friend Robert Brindley, the architect, struck the table with aviolent fist, making his little boys blink, and then he said quietly:

"_The_ deuce!"

I gathered that grandmamma's birthday had been forgotten and that it wasnot a festival that could be neglected with impunity. Both Mr and MrsBrindley had evidently a humorous appreciation of crises, contretemps,and those collisions of circumstances which are usually called"junctures" for short. I could have imagined either of them saying tothe other: "Here's a funny thing! The house is on fire!" And thenyielding to laughter as they ran for buckets. Mrs Brindley, inparticular, laughed now; she gazed at the table-cloth and laughed almostsilently to herself; though it appeared that their joint forgetfulnessmight result in temporary estrangement from a venerable ancestor who wasalso, birthdays being duly observed, a continual fount of rich presentsin specie.

Robert Brindley drew a time-table from his breast-pocket with the rapidgesture of habit. All men of business in the Five Towns seem to carrythat time-table in their breast-pockets. Then he examined his watchcarefully.

"You'll have time to dress up your progeny and catch the 2.5. It makesthe connection at Knype for Axe."

The two little boys, aged perhaps four and six, who had been ladling themessy contents of specially deep plates on to their bibs, dropped theirspoons and began to babble about grea'-granny, and one of them insistedseveral times that he must wear his new gaiters.

"Yes," said Mrs Brindley to her husband, after reflection. "And a fineold crowd there'll be in the train--with this football match!"

"Can't be helped!... Now, you kids, hook it upstairs to nurse."

"And what about you?" asked Mrs Brindley.

"You must tell the old lady I'm kept by business."

"I told her that last year, and you know what happened."

"Well," said Brindley. "Here Loring's just come. You don't expect me toleave him, do you? Or have you had the beautiful idea of taking him overto Axe to pass a pleasant Saturday afternoon with your esteemedgrandmother?"

"No," said Mrs Brindley. "Hardly that!"

"Well, then?"

The boys, having first revolved on their axes, slid down from their highchairs as though from horses.

"Look here," I said. "You mustn't mind me. I shall be all right."

"Ha-ha!" shouted Brindley. "I seem to see you turned loose alone in thisamusing town on a winter afternoon. I seem to see you!"

"I could stop in and read," I said, eyeing the multitudinous books onevery wall of the dining-room. The house was dadoed throughout withbooks.

"Rot!" said Brindley.

This was only my third visit to his home and to the Five Towns, but heand I had already become curiously intimate. My first two visits hadbeen occasioned by official pilgrimages as a British Museum expert inceramics. The third was for a purely friendly week-end, and had nopretext. The fact is, I was drawn to the astonishing district and itsastonishing inhabitants. The Five Towns, to me, was like the East tothose who have smelt the East: it "called."

"I'll tell you what we _could_ do," said Mrs Brindley. "We could put himon to Dr Stirling."

"So we could!" Brindley agreed. "Wife, this is one of your bright,intelligent days. We'll put you on to the doctor, Loring. I'll impresson him that he must keep you constantly amused till I get back, which Ifear it won't be early. This is what we call manners, you know--toinvite a fellow-creature to travel a hundred and fifty miles to spendtwo days here, and then to turn him out before he's been in the house anhour. It's _us_, that is! But the truth of the matter is, the birthdaybusiness might be a bit serious. It might easily cost me fifty quid andno end of diplomacy. If you were a married man you'd know that the tenplagues of Egypt are simply nothing in comparison with your wife'srelations. And she's over eighty, the old lady."

"_I_'ll give you ten plagues of Egypt!" Mrs Brindley menaced her spouse,as she wafted the boys from the room. "Mr Loring, do take some more ofthat cheese if you fancy it." She vanished.

Within ten minutes Brindley was conducting me to the doctor's, whosehouse was on the way to the station. In its spacious porch he explainedthe circumstances in six words, depositing me like a parcel. The doctor,who had once by mysterious medicaments saved my frail organism from theconsequences of one of Brindley's Falstaffian "nights," hospitablyprotested his readiness to sacrifice patients to my pleasure.

"It'll be a chance for MacIlroy," said he.

"Who's MacIlroy?" I asked.

"MacIlroy is another Scotchman," growled Brindley. "Extraordinary howthey stick together! When he wanted an assistant, do you suppose helooked about for some one in the district, some one who understood usand loved us and could take a hand at bridge? Not he! Off he goes toCupar, or somewhere, and comes back with another stage Scotchman, namedMacIlroy. Now listen here, Doc! A charge to keep you have, and mind youkeep it, or I'll never pay your confounded bill. We'll knock on thewindow to-night as we come back. In the meantime you can show Loringyour etchings, and pray for me." And to me: "Here's a latchkey." With nofurther ceremony he hurried away to join his wife and children atBleakridge Station. In such singular manner was I transferred forciblyfrom host to host.

II

The doctor and I resembled each other in this: that there was nooffensive affability about either of us. Though abounding ingood-nature, we could not become intimate by a sudden act of volition.Our conversation was difficult, unnatural, and by gusts falselyfamiliar. He displayed to me his bachelor house, his etchings, a fewspecimens of modern _rouge flambe_ ware made at Knype, his whisky, hiscelebrated prize-winning fox-terrier Titus, the largest collection ofbooks in the Five Towns, and photographs of Marischal College, Aberdeen.Then we fell flat, socially prone. Sitting in his study, with Titusbetween us on the hearthrug, we knew no more what to say or do. Iregretted that Brindley's wife's grandmother should have been born on afifteenth of February. Brindley was a vivacious talker, he could betrusted to talk. I, too, am a good talker--with another good talker.With a bad talker I am just a little worse than he is. The doctor saidabruptly after a nerve-trying silence that he had forgotten a mostimportant call at Hanbridge, and would I care to go with him in the car?I was and still am convinced that he was simply inventing. He wanted tobreak the sinister spell by getting out of the house, and he had not theface to suggest a sortie into the streets of the Five Towns as apromenade of pleasure.

So we went forth, splashing warily through the rich mud and the dankmist of Trafalgar Road, past all those strange little Indian-red houses,and ragged empty spaces, and poster-hoardings, and rounded kilns, andhigh, smoking chimneys, up hill, down hill, and up hill again,encountering and overtaking many electric trams that dipped and roselike ships at sea, into Crown Square, the centre of Hanbridge, themetropolis of the Five Towns. And while the doctor paid his mysteriouscall I stared around me at the large shops and the banks and the gildedhotels. Down the radiating street-vistas I could make out the facades ofhalls, theatres, chapels. Trams rumbled continually in and out of thesquare. They seemed to enter casually, to hesitate a few moments as ifat a loss, and then to decide with a nonchalant clang of bells that theymight as well go off somewhere else in search of something moreinteresting. They were rather like human beings who are condemned tolive for ever in a place of which they are sick beyond theexpressiveness of words.

And indeed the influence of Crown Square, with its large effects ofterra cotta, plate glass, and gold letters, all under a heavy skyscapeof drab smoke, was depressing. A few very seedy men (sharply contrastingwith the fine delicacy of costly things behind plate-glass) stooddoggedly here and there in the mud, immobilized by the gloomyenchantment of the Square. Two of them turned to look at Stirling'smotor-car and me. They gazed fixedly for a long time, and then one said,only his lips moving:

"Has Tommy stood thee that there quart o' beer as he promised thee?"

No reply, no response of any sort, for a further long period! Then theother said, with grim resignation:

"Ay!"

The conversation ceased, having made a little oasis in the dismal desertof their silent scrutiny of the car. Except for an occasional stamp ofthe foot they never moved. They just doggedly and indifferently stood,blown upon by all the nipping draughts of the square, and as it might besinking deeper and deeper into its dejection. As for me, instead ofdesolating, the harsh disconsolateness of the scene seemed to uplift me;I savoured it with joy, as one savours the melancholy of a tragic workof art.

"We might go down to the _Signal_ offices and worry Buchanan a bit,"said the doctor, cheerfully, when he came back to the car. This was thesecond of his inspirations.

Buchanan, of whom I had heard, was another Scotchman and the editor ofthe sole daily organ of the Five Towns, an evening newspaper cried allday in the streets and read by the entire population. Its green sheetappeared to be a permanent waving feature of the main thoroughfares. Theoffices lay round a corner close by, and as we drew up in front of thema crowd of tattered urchins interrupted their diversions in the soddenroad to celebrate our glorious arrival by unanimously yelling at the topof their strident and hoarse voices:

"Hooray! Hoo--bl----dy--ray!"

Abashed, I followed my doctor into the shelter of the building, a newedifice, capacious and considerable, but horribly faced with terracotta, and quite unimposing, lacking in the spectacular effect; likenearly everything in the Five Towns, carelessly and scornfully ugly! Themean, swinging double-doors returned to the assault when you pushedthem, and hit you viciously. In a dark, countered room marked"Enquiries" there was nobody.

"Hi, there!" called the doctor.

A head appeared at a door.

"Mr Buchanan upstairs?"

"Yes," snapped the head, and disappeared.

Up a dark staircase we went, and at the summit were half flung backagain by another self-acting door.

In the room to which we next came an old man and a youngish one werebent over a large, littered table, scribbling on and arranging pieces ofgrey tissue paper and telegrams. Behind the old man stood a boy. Neitherof them looked up.

"Mr Buchanan in his--" the doctor began to question. "Oh! There youare!"

The editor was standing in hat and muffler at the window, gazing out.His age was about that of the doctor--forty or so; and like the doctorhe was rather stout and clean-shaven. Their Scotch accents mingled ingreeting, the doctor's being the more marked. Buchanan shook my handwith a certain courtliness, indicating that he was well accustomed toreceive strangers. As an expert in small talk, however, he shone nobrighter than his visitors, and the three of us stood there by thewindow awkwardly in the heaped disorder of the room, while the other twomen scratched and fidgeted with bits of paper at the soiled table.

Suddenly and savagely the old man turned on the boy:

"What the hades are you waiting there for?"

"I thought there was something else, sir."

"Sling your hook."

Buchanan winked at Stirling and me as the boy slouched off and the oldman blandly resumed his writing.

"Perhaps you'd like to look over the place?" Buchanan suggested politelyto me. "I'll come with you. It's all I'm fit for to-day.... 'Flu!" Heglanced at Stirling, and yawned.

"Ye ought to be in bed," said Stirling.

"Yes. I know. I've known it for twelve years. I shall go to bed as soonas I get a bit of time to myself. Well, will you come? The half-timeresults are beginning to come in."

A telephone-bell rang impatiently.

"You might just see what that is, boss," said the old man withoutlooking up.

Buchanan went to the telephone and replied into it: "Yes? What? Oh!Myatt? Yes, he's playing.... Of course I'm sure! Good-bye." He turned tothe old man: "It's another of 'em wanting to know if Myatt is playing.Birmingham, this time."

"Ah!" exclaimed the old man, still writing.

"It's because of the betting," Buchanan glanced at me. "The odds are onKnype now--three to two."

"If Myatt is playing Knype have got me to thank for it," said thedoctor, surprisingly.

"You?"

"Me! He fetched me to his wife this morning. She's nearing herconfinement. False alarm. I guaranteed him at least another twelvehours."

"Oh! So that's it, is it?" Buchanan murmured.

Both the sub-editors raised their heads.

"That's it," said the doctor.

"Some people were saying he'd quarrelled with the trainer again and wasshamming," said Buchanan. "But I didn't believe that. There's nohanky-panky about Jos Myatt, anyhow."

I learnt in answer to my questions that a great and terrible footballmatch was at that moment in progress at Knype, a couple of miles away,between the Knype Club and the Manchester Rovers. It was conveyed to methat the importance of this match was almost national, and that theentire district was practically holding its breath till the resultshould be known. The half-time result was one goal each.

"If Knype lose," said Buchanan, explanatorily, "they'll find themselvespushed out of the First League at the end of the season. That's a cert... one of the oldest clubs in England! Semi-finalists for the EnglishCup in '78."

"'79," corrected the elder sub-editor.

I gathered that the crisis was grave.

"And Myatt's the captain, I suppose?" said I.

"No. But he's the finest full-back in the League."

I then had a vision of Myatt as a great man. By an effort of theimagination I perceived that the equivalent of the fate of nationsdepended upon him. I recollected, now, large yellow posters on thehoardings we had passed, with the names of Knype and of ManchesterRovers in letters a foot high and the legend "League match at Knype"over all. It seemed to me that the heroic name of Jos Myatt, if truly hewere the finest full-back in the League, if truly his presence orabsence affected the betting as far off as Birmingham, ought also tohave been on the posters, together with possibly his portrait. I saw JosMyatt as a matador, with a long ribbon of scarlet necktie down hisbreast, and embroidered trousers.

"Why," said Buchanan, "if Knype drop into the Second Division they'llnever pay another dividend! It'll be all up with first-class football inthe Five Towns!"

The interests involved seemed to grow more complicated. And here I hadbeen in the district nearly four hours without having guessed that thedistrict was quivering in the tense excitement of gigantic issues! Andhere was this Scotch doctor, at whose word the great Myatt would havedeclined to play, never saying a syllable about the affair, until achance remark from Buchanan loosened his tongue. But all doctors arestrangely secretive. Secretiveness is one of their chief privatepleasures.

"Come and see the pigeons, eh?" said Buchanan.

"Pigeons?" I repeated.

"We give the results of over a hundred matches in our Football Edition,"said Buchanan, and added: "not counting Rugby."

As we left the room two boys dodged round us into it, bearing telegrams.

In a moment we were, in the most astonishing manner, on a leaden roof ofthe _Signal_ offices. High factory chimneys rose over the horizon ofslates on every side, blowing thick smoke into the general murk of theafternoon sky, and crossing the western crimson with long pennons ofblack. And out of the murk there came from afar a blue-and-white pigeonwhich circled largely several times over the offices of the _Signal_. Atlength it descended, and I could hear the whirr of its strong wings. Thewings ceased to beat and the pigeon slanted downwards in a curve, itshead lower than its wide tail. Then the little head gradually rose andthe tail fell; the curve had changed, the pace slackened; the pigeon wascalculating with all its brain; eyes, wings, tail and feet were beingco-ordinated to the resolution of an intricate mechanical problem. Thepinkish claws seemed to grope--and after an instant of hesitation thething was done, the problem solved; the pigeon, with deliciousgracefulness, had established equilibrium on the ridge of a pigeon-cote,and folded its wings, and was peering about with strange motions of itsextremely movable head. Presently it flew down to the leads, waddled toand fro with the ungainly gestures of a fat woman of sixty, anddisappeared into the cote. At the same moment the boy who had beendismissed from the sub-editor's room ran forward and entered the cote bya wire-screened door.

"Handy things, pigeons!" said the doctor as we approached to examine thecote. Fifty or sixty pigeons were cooing and strutting in it. There wasa protest of wings as the boy seized the last arriving messenger.

"Give it here!" Buchanan ordered.

The boy handed over a thin tube of paper which he had unfastened fromthe bird's leg. Buchanan unrolled it and showed it to me. I read:"Midland Federation. Axe United, Macclesfield Town. Match abandonedafter half-hour's play owing to fog. Three forty-five."

"Three forty-five," said Buchanan, looking at his watch. "He's done theten miles in half an hour, roughly. Not bad. First time we tried pigeonsfrom as far off as Axe. Here, boy!" And he restored the paper to theboy, who gave it to another boy, who departed with it.

"Man," said the doctor, eyeing Buchanan. "Ye'd no business out here.Ye're not precisely a pigeon."

Down we went, one after another, by the ladder, and now we fell into thecomposing-room, where Buchanan said he felt warmer. An immense, dirty,white-washed apartment crowded with linotypes and other machines, infront of which sat men in white aprons, tapping, tapping--gazing atdocuments pinned at the level of their eyes--and tapping, tapping. Akind of cavernous retreat in which monstrous iron growths rose out ofthe floor and were met half-way by electric flowers that had their rootsin the ceiling! In this jungle there was scarcely room for us to walk.Buchanan explained the linotypes to me. I watched, as thoughromantically dreaming, the flashing descent of letter after letter, arain of letters into the belly of the machine; then, going round to theback, I watched the same letters rising again in a close, slowprocession, and sorting themselves by themselves at the top in readinessto answer again to the tapping, tapping of a man in a once-white apron.And while I was watching all that I could somehow, by a faculty which wehave, at the same time see pigeons far overhead, arriving and arrivingout of the murk from beyond the verge of chimneys.

"Ingenious, isn't it?" said Stirling.

But I imagine that he had not the faculty by which to see the pigeons.

A reverend, bearded, spectacled man, with his shirt-sleeves rolled upand an apron stretched over his hemispherical paunch, strolled slowlyalong an alley, glancing at a galley-proof with an ingenuous air just asif he had never seen a galley-proof before.

"It's a stick more than a column already," said he confidentially,offering the long paper, and then gravely looking at Buchanan, with headbent forward, not through his spectacles but over them.

The editor negligently accepted the proof, and I read a series oftitles: "Knype _v_. Manchester Rovers. Record Gate. Fifteen thousandspectators. Two goals in twelve minutes. Myatt in form. Special Report."

Buchanan gave the slip back without a word.

"There you are!" said he to me, as another compositor near us attached apiece of tissue paper to his machine. It was the very paper that I hadseen come out of the sky, but its contents had been enlarged and amendedby the sub-editorial pen. The man began tapping, tapping, and theletters began to flash downwards on their way to tell a quarter of amillion people that Axe _v_. Macclesfield had been stopped by fog.

"I suppose that Knype match is over by now?" I said.

"Oh no!" said Buchanan. "The second half has scarcely begun."

"Like to go?" Stirling asked.

"Well," I said, feeling adventurous, "it's a notion, isn't it?"

"You can run Mr Loring down there in five or six minutes," saidBuchanan. "And he's probably never seen anything like it before. Youmight call here as you come home and see the paper on the machines."

III

We went on the Grand Stand, which was packed with men whose eyes werefixed, with an unconscious but intense effort, on a common object. Amongthe men were a few women in furs and wraps, equally absorbed. Nobodytook any notice of us as we insinuated our way up a rickety flight ofwooden stairs, but when by misadventure we grazed a human being theelbow of that being shoved itself automatically and fiercely outwards,to repel. I had an impression of hats, caps, and woolly overcoatsstretched in long parallel lines, and of grimy raw planks everywherepresenting possibly dangerous splinters, save where use had worn theminto smooth shininess. Then gradually I became aware of the vast field,which was more brown than green. Around the field was a wide border ofinfinitesimal hats and pale faces, rising in tiers, and beyond thisborder fences, hoardings, chimneys, furnaces, gasometers,telegraph-poles, houses, and dead trees. And here and there, perched instrange perilous places, even high up towards the sombre sky, were morehuman beings clinging. On the field itself, at one end of it, were ascattered handful of doll-like figures, motionless; some had whitebodies, others red; and three were in black; all were so small and sofar off that they seemed to be mere unimportant casual incidents inwhatever recondite affair it was that was proceeding. Then a whistleshrieked, and all these figures began simultaneously to move, and thenI saw a ball in the air. An obscure, uneasy murmuring rose from theimmense multitude like an invisible but audible vapour. The next instantthe vapour had condensed into a sudden shout. Now I saw the ball rollingsolitary in the middle of the field, and a single red doll racingtowards it; at one end was a confused group of red and white, and at theother two white dolls, rather lonely in the expanse. The single red dollovertook the ball and scudded along with it at his twinkling toes. Agreat voice behind me bellowed with an incredible volume of sound:

"Now, Jos!"

And another voice, further away, bellowed:

"Now, Jos!"

And still more distantly the grim warning shot forth from the crowd:

"Now, Jos! Now, Jos!"

The nearer of the white dolls, as the red one approached, sprangforward. I could see a leg. And the ball was flying back in amagnificent curve into the skies; it passed out of my sight, and then Iheard a bump on the slates of the roof of the grand stand, and it fellamong the crowd in the stand-enclosure. But almost before the flight ofthe ball had commenced, a terrific roar of relief had rolled formidablyround the field, and out of that roar, like rockets out of thick smoke,burst acutely ecstatic cries of adoration:

"Bravo, Jos!"

"Good old Jos!"

The leg had evidently been Jos's leg. The nearer of these two whitedolls must be Jos, darling of fifteen thousand frenzied people.

Stirling punched a neighbour in the side to attract his attention.

"What's the score?" he demanded of the neighbour, who scowled and thengrinned.

"Two--one--agen uz!" The other growled.

"It'll take our b----s all their time to draw. They're playing a manshort."

"Accident?"

"No! Referee ordered him off for rough play."

Several spectators began to explain, passionately, furiously, that thereferee's action was utterly bereft of common sense and justice; and Igathered that a less gentlemanly crowd would undoubtedly have lynchedthe referee. The explanations died down, and everybody except me resumedhis fierce watch on the field.

I was recalled from the exercise of a vague curiosity upon the set,anxious faces around me by a crashing, whooping cheer which in volumeand sincerity of joy surpassed all noises in my experience. This massivecheer reverberated round the field like the echoes of a battleship'sbroadside in a fiord. But it was human, and therefore more terrible thanguns. I instinctively thought: "If such are the symptoms of pleasure,what must be the symptoms of pain or disappointment?" Simultaneouslywith the expulsion of the unique noise the expression of the faceschanged. Eyes sparkled; teeth became prominent in enormous, uncontrolledsmiles. Ferocious satisfaction had to find vent in ferocious gestures,wreaked either upon dead wood or upon the living tissues offellow-creatures. The gentle, mannerly sound of hand-clapping was a kindof light froth on the surface of the billowy sea of heartfelt applause.The host of the fifteen thousand might have just had their lives saved,or their children snatched from destruction and their wives fromdishonour; they might have been preserved from bankruptcy, starvation,prison, torture; they might have been rewarding with their impassionedworship a band of national heroes. But it was not so. All that hadhappened was that the ball had rolled into the net of the ManchesterRovers' goal. Knype had drawn level. The reputation of the Five Townsbefore the jury of expert opinion that could distinguish betweenfirst-class football and second-class was maintained intact. I couldhear specialists around me proving that though Knype had yet five Leaguematches to play, its situation was safe. They pointed excitedly to ahuge hoarding at one end of the ground on which appeared names of otherclubs with changing figures. These clubs included the clubs which Knypewould have to meet before the end of the season, and the figuresindicated their fortunes on various grounds similar to this ground allover the country. If a goal was scored in Newcastle, or in Southampton,the very Peru of first-class football, it was registered on that boardand its possible effect on the destinies of Knype was instantlyassessed. The calculations made were dizzying.

Then a little flock of pigeons flew up and separated, under the illusionthat they were free agents and masters of the air, but really waftedaway to fixed destinations on the stupendous atmospheric waves ofstill-continued cheering.

After a minute or two the ball was restarted, and the greater noise haddiminished to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like adelicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat andmanoeuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intentionor its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful ornot, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had passed beyondmorality into religion.

Then, again, while my attention had lapsed from the field, a devilish, abarbaric, and a deafening yell broke from those fifteen thousandpassionate hearts. It thrilled me; it genuinely frightened me. Iinvoluntarily made the motion of swallowing. After the thunderous crashof anger from the host came the thin sound of a whistle. The gamestopped. I heard the same word repeated again and again, in diverstones of exasperated fury:

"Foul!"

I felt that I was hemmed in by potential homicides, whose arms werelifted in the desire of murder and whose features were changed from thelikeness of man into the corporeal form of some pure and terribleinstinct.

And I saw a long doll rise from the ground and approach a lesser dollwith threatening hands.

"Foul! Foul!"

"Go it, Jos! Knock his neck out! Jos! He tripped thee up!"

There was a prolonged gesticulatory altercation between the three blackdolls in leather leggings and several of the white and the red dolls. Atlast one of the mannikins in leggings shrugged his shoulders, made adefinite gesture to the other two, and walked away towards the edge ofthe field nearest the stand. It was the unprincipled referee; he haddisallowed the foul. In the protracted duel between the offendingManchester forward and the great, honest Jos Myatt he had given anotherpoint to the enemy. As soon as the host realized the infamy it yelledonce more in heightened fury. It seemed to surge in masses against thethick iron railings that alone stood between the referee and death. Thediscreet referee was approaching the grand stand as the least unsafeplace. In a second a handful of executioners had somehow got on to thegrass. And in the next second several policemen were in front of them,not striking nor striving to intimidate, but heavily pushing them intobounds.

"Get back there!" cried a few abrupt, commanding voices from the stand.

The referee stood with his hands in his pockets and his whistle in hismouth. I think that in that moment of acutest suspense the whole of hisearthly career must have flashed before him in a phantasmagoria. Andthen the crisis was past. The inherent gentlemanliness of the outragedhost had triumphed and the referee was spared.

"Served him right if they'd man-handled him!" said a spectator.

"Ay!" said another, gloomily, "ay! And th' Football Association 'ud ha'fined us maybe a hundred quid and disqualified th' ground for the resto' th' season!"

"D----n th' Football Association!"

"Ay! But you canna'!"

"Now, lads! Play up, Knype! Now, lads! Give 'em hot hell!" Differentvoices heartily encouraged the home team as the ball was thrown intoplay.

The fouling Manchester forward immediately resumed possession of theball. Experience could not teach him. He parted with the ball and got itagain, twice. The devil was in him and in the ball. The devil wasdriving him towards Myatt. They met. And then came a sound quite new: acracking sound, somewhat like the snapping of a bough, but sharper, moredecisive.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Stirling. "That's his bone!"

And instantly he was off down the staircase and I after him. But he wasnot the first doctor on the field. Nothing had been unforeseen in thewonderful organization of this enterprise. A pigeon sped away and anofficial doctor and an official stretcher appeared, miraculously,simultaneously. It was tremendous. It inspired awe in me.

"He asked for it!" I heard a man say as I hesitated on the shore of theocean of mud.

Then I knew that it was Manchester and not Knype that had suffered. Theconfusion and hubbub were in a high degree disturbing and puzzling. Butone emotion emerged clear: pleasure. I felt it myself. I was aware ofjoy in that the two sides were now levelled to ten men apiece. I wasmystically identified with the Five Towns, absorbed into their life. Icould discern on every face the conviction that a divine providence wasin this affair, that God could not be mocked. I too had this conviction.I could discern also on every face the fear lest the referee might givea foul against the hero Myatt, or even order him off the field, thoughof course the fracture was a simple accident. I too had this fear. Itwas soon dispelled by the news which swept across the entire enclosurelike a sweet smell, that the referee had adopted the theory of a simpleaccident. I saw vaguely policemen, a stretcher, streaming crowds, and myears heard a monstrous universal babbling. And then the figure ofStirling detached itself from the moving disorder and came to me.

"Well, Hyatt's calf was harder than the other chap's, that's all," hesaid.

"Which _is_ Myatt?" I asked, for the red and the white dolls had allvanished at close quarters, and were replaced by unrecognizably gigantichuman animals, still clad, however, in dolls' vests and dolls'knickerbockers.

Stirling warningly jerked his head to indicate a man not ten feet awayfrom me. This was Myatt, the hero of the host and the darling ofpopulations. I gazed up at him. His mouth and his left knee were redwith blood, and he was piebald with thick patches of mud from histousled crown to his enormous boot. His blue eyes had a heavy, stupid,honest glance; and of the three qualities stupidity predominated. Heseemed to be all feet, knees, hands and elbows. His head was verysmall--the sole remainder of the doll in him.

"Well," said Myatt, with slow bitterness. "Hadn't he been blooming wellbegging and praying for it, aw afternoon? Hadn't he now?"

The little man nodded. Then he said in a lower tone:

"How's missis, like?"

"Her's altogether yet," said Myatt. "Or I'd none ha' played!"

"I've bet Watty half-a-dollar as it inna' a lad!" said the little man.

Myatt seemed angry.

"Wilt bet me half a _quid_ as it inna' a lad?" he demanded, bending downand scowling and sticking out his muddy chin.

"Ay!" said the little man, not blenching.

"Evens?"

"Evens."

"I'll take thee, Charlie," said Myatt, resuming his calm.

The whistle sounded. And several orders were given to clear the field.Eight minutes had been lost over a broken leg, but Stirling said thatthe referee would surely deduct them from the official time, so thatafter all the game would not be shortened.

"I'll be up yon, to-morra morning," said the little man.

Myatt nodded and departed. Charlie, the little man, turned on his heeland proudly rejoined the crowd. He had been seen of all in converse withsupreme greatness.

Stirling and I also retired; and though Jos Myatt had not even done hisdoctor the honour of seeing him, neither of us, I think, was quitewithout a consciousness of glory: I cannot imagine why. The rest of thegame was flat and tame. Nothing occurred. The match ended in a draw.

IV

We were swept from the football ground on a furious flood ofhumanity--carried forth and flung down a slope into a large waste spacethat separated the ground from the nearest streets of little reddishhouses. At the bottom of the slope, on my suggestion, we halted for afew moments aside, while the current rushed forward and, spreading out,inundated the whole space in one marvellous minute. The impression ofthe multitude streaming from that gap in the wooden wall was likenothing more than the impression of a burst main which only the emptyingof the reservoir will assuage. Anybody who wanted to commit suicidemight have stood in front of that gap and had his wish. He would nothave been noticed. The interminable and implacable infantry charge wouldhave passed unheedingly over him. A silent, preoccupied host, bent onsomething else now, and perhaps teased by the inconvenient thought thatafter all a draw is not as good as a win! It hurried blindly,instinctively outwards, knees and chins protruding, hands deep inpockets, chilled feet stamping. Occasionally someone stopped orslackened to light a pipe, and on being curtly bunted onward by a blindforce from behind, accepted the hint as an atom accepts the law ofgravity. The fever and ecstasy were over. What fascinated the Southernin me was the grim taciturnity, the steady stare (vacant or dreaming),and the heavy, muffled, multitudinous tramp shaking the cindery earth.The flood continued to rage through the gap.

Our automobile had been left at the Haycock Hotel; we went to get it,braving the inundation. Nearly opposite the stable-yard the electrictrams started for Hanbridge, Bursley and Turnhill, and for Longshaw.Here the crowd was less dangerous, but still very formidable--to myeyes. Each tram as it came up was savagely assaulted, seized, crammedand possessed, with astounding rapidity. Its steps were the western bankof a Beresina. At a given moment the inured conductor, brandishing hisleather-shielded arm with a pitiless gesture, thrust aspirants downinto the mud and the tram rolled powerfully away. All this in silence.

After a few minutes a bicyclist swished along through the mud, takingthe far side of the road, which was comparatively free. He wore greytrousers, heavy boots, and a dark cut-away coat, up the back of which aline of caked mud had deposited itself. On his head was a bowler hat.

"How do, Jos?" cried a couple of boys, cheekily. And then there were afew adult greetings of respect.

It was the hero, in haste.

"Out of it, there!" he warned impeders, between his teeth, and pluggedon with bent head.

"He keeps the Foaming Quart up at Toft End," said the doctor. "It's thehighest pub in the Five Towns. He used to be what they call apot-hunter, a racing bicyclist, you know. But he's got past that andhe'll soon be past football. He's thirty-four if he's a day. That's onereason why he's so independent--that and because he's almost the onlygenuine native in the team."

"Why?" I asked. "Where do they come from, then?"

"Oh!" said Stirling as he gently started the car. "The club buys 'em, upand down the country. Four of 'em are Scots. A few years ago an Oldhamclub offered Knype L500 for Myatt, a big price--more than he's worthnow! But he wouldn't go, though they guaranteed to put him into afirst-class pub--a free house. He's never cost Knype anything except hiswages and the goodwill of the Foaming Quart."

"What are his wages?"

"Don't know exactly. Not much. The Football Association fix a maximum. Idaresay about four pounds a week _Hi there! Are you deaf_?"

In a few minutes we had arrived at Hanbridge, splashing all the waybetween two processions that crowded either footpath. And in the middleof the road was a third procession of trams,--tram following tram, eachgorged with passengers, frothing at the step with passengers; not thelackadaisical trams that I had seen earlier in the afternoon in CrownSquare; a different race of trams, eager and impetuous velocities. Wereached the _Signal_ offices. No crowd of urchins to salute us thistime!

Under the earth was the machine-room of the _Signal_. It reminded me ofthe bowels of a ship, so full was it of machinery. One huge machineclattered slowly, and a folded green thing dropped strangely on to alittle iron table in front of us. Buchanan opened it, and I saw that thebroken leg was in it at length, together with a statement that in the_Signal's_ opinion the sympathy of every true sportsman would be withthe disabled player. I began to say something to Buchanan, when suddenlyI could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behindus, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. Allthat my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the bluearc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green paperswere snowing down upon the iron table far faster than the eye couldfollow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me away and carried off thegreen papers in bundles, but not more quickly than the machine shedthem. Buchanan put his lips to my ear. But I could hear nothing. I shookmy head. He smiled, and led us out from the tumult.

"Come and see the boys take them," he said at the foot of the stairs.

In a sort of hall on the ground floor was a long counter, and beyond thecounter a system of steel railings in parallel lines, so arranged that aperson entering at the public door could only reach the counter bypassing up or down each alley in succession. These steel lanes, whichabsolutely ensured the triumph of right over might, were packed withboys--the ragged urchins whom we had seen playing in the street. But noturchins now; rather young tigers! Perhaps half a dozen had reached thecounter; the rest were massed behind, shouting and quarrelling. Througha hole in the wall, at the level of the counter, bundles of papers shotcontinuously, and were snatched up by servers, who distributed them insmaller bundles to the hungry boys; who flung down metal discs inexchange and fled, fled madly as though fiends were after them, througha third door, out of the pandemonium into the darkling street. Andunceasingly the green papers appeared at the hole in the wall andunceasingly they were plucked away and borne off by those maddenedchildren, whose destination was apparently Aix or Ghent, and whose wingswere their tatters.

"What are those discs?" I inquired.

"The lads have to come and buy them earlier in the day," said Buchanan."We haven't time to sell this edition for cash, you see."

"Well," I said as we left, "I'm very much obliged."

"What on earth for?" Buchanan asked.

"Everything," I said.

We returned through the squares of Hanbridge and by Trafalgar Road toStirling's house at Bleakridge. And everywhere in the deepening twilightI could see the urchins, often hatless and sometimes scarcely shod,scudding over the lamp-reflecting mire with sheets of wavy green, andabove the noises of traffic I could hear the shrill outcry: "_Signal_.Football Edition. Football Edition. _Signal_." The world was beinginformed of the might of Jos Myatt, and of the averting of disaster fromKnype, and of the results of over a hundred other matches--not countingRugby.

V

During the course of the evening, when Stirling had thoroughlyaccustomed himself to the state of being in sole charge of an expertfrom the British Museum, London, and the high walls round his moreprivate soul had yielded to my timid but constant attacks, we grewfairly intimate. And in particular the doctor proved to me that hisreputation for persuasive raciness with patients was well founded. Yetup to the time of dessert I might have been justified in supposing thatthat much-praised "manner" in a sick-room was nothing but a provinciallegend. Such may be the influence of a quite inoffensive and shyLondoner in the country. At half-past ten, Titus being already asleepfor the night in an arm-chair, we sat at ease over the fire in the studytelling each other stories. We had dealt with the arts, and withmedicine; now we were dealing with life, in those aspects of it whichcause men to laugh and women uneasily to wonder. Once or twice we hadmentioned the Brindleys. The hour for their arrival was come. But beingdeeply comfortable and content where I was, I felt no impatience. Thenthere was a tap on the window.

"That's Bobbie!" said Stirling, rising slowly from his chair. "_He_won't refuse whisky, even if you do. I'd better get another bottle."

The tap was repeated peevishly.

"I'm coming, laddie!" Stirling protested.

He slippered out through the hall and through the surgery to the sidedoor, I following, and Titus sneezing and snuffing in the rear.

"I say, mester," said a heavy voice as the doctor opened the door. Itwas not Brindley, but Jos Myatt. Unable to locate the bell-push in thedark, he had characteristically attacked the sole illuminated window. Hedemanded, or he commanded, very curtly, that the doctor should go upinstantly to the Foaming Quart at Toft End.

Stirling hesitated a moment.

"All right, my man," said he, calmly.

"Now?" the heavy, suspicious voice on the doorstep insisted.

"I'll be there before ye if ye don't sprint, man. I'll run up in thecar." Stirling shut the door. I heard footsteps on the gravel pathoutside.

"Ye heard?" said he to me. "And what am I to do with ye?"

"I'll go with you, of course," I answered.

"I may be kept up there a while."

"I don't care," I said roisterously. "It's a pub and I'm a traveller."

Stirling's household was in bed and his assistant gone home. While heand Titus got out the car I wrote a line for the Brindleys: "Gone withdoctor to see patient at Toft End. Don't wait up.--A.L." This we pushedunder Brindley's front door on our way forth. Very soon we werevibrating up a steep street on the first speed of the car, and theyellow reflections of distant furnaces began to shine over house roofsbelow us. It was exhilaratingly cold, a clear and frosty night, tonic,bracing after the enclosed warmth of the study. I was joyous, butsilently. We had quitted the kingdom of the god Pan; we were in Lucina'srealm, its consequence, where there is no laughter. We were on amission.

"I didn't expect this," said Stirling.

"No?" I said. "But seeing that he fetched you this morning--"

"Oh! That was only in order to be sure, for himself. His sister wasthere, in charge. Seemed very capable. Knew all about everything. Untilye get to the high social status of a clerk or a draper's assistantpeople seem to manage to have their children without professionalassistance."

"Then do you think there's anything wrong?" I asked.

"I'd not be surprised."

He changed to the second speed as the car topped the first bluff. Wesaid no more. The night and the mission solemnized us. And gradually, aswe rose towards the purple skies, the Five Towns wrote themselves out infire on the irregular plain below.

"That's Hanbridge Town Hall," said Stirling, pointing to the right. "Andthat's Bursley Town Hall," he said, pointing to the left. And there weremany other beacons, dominating the jewelled street-lines that faded onthe horizon into golden-tinted smoke.

The road was never quite free of houses. After occurring but sparselyfor half a mile, they thickened into a village--the suburb of Bursleycalled Toft End. I saw a moving red light in front of us. It was thereverse of Hyatt's bicycle lantern. The car stopped near the dark facadeof the inn, of which two yellow windows gleamed. Stirling, under Myatt'sshouted guidance, backed into an obscure yard under cover. The engineceased to throb.

"Friend of mine," he introduced me to Myatt. "By the way, Loring, passme my bag, will you? Mustn't forget that." Then he extinguished theacetylene lamps, and there was no light in the yard except the ray ofthe bicycle lantern which Myatt held in his hand. We groped towards thehouse. Strange, every step that I take in the Five Towns seems to havethe genuine quality of an adventure!

VI

In five minutes I was of no account in the scheme of things at Toft End,and I began to wonder why I had come. Stirling, my sole protector, hadvanished up the dark stairs of the house, following a stout, youngishwoman in a white apron, who bore a candle. Jos Myatt, behind, said tome: "Happen you'd better go in there, mester," pointing to a half-opendoor at the foot of the stairs. I went into a little room at the rear ofthe bar-parlour. A good fire burned in a small old-fashioned grate, butthere was no other light. The inn was closed to customers, it being pasteleven o'clock. On a bare table I perceived a candle, and ventured toput a match to it. I then saw almost exactly such a room as one wouldexpect to find at the rear of the bar-parlour of an inn on the outskirtsof an industrial town. It appeared to serve the double purpose of aliving-room and of a retreat for favoured customers. The table wasevidently one at which men drank. On a shelf was a row of bottles, moreor less empty, bearing names famous in newspaper advertisements and inthe House of Lords. The dozen chairs suggested an acute bodilydiscomfort such as would only be tolerated by a sitter all of whosesensory faculties were centred in his palate. On a broken chair in acorner was an insecure pile of books. A smaller table was covered with achequered cloth on which were a few plates. Along one wall, under thewindow, ran a pitch-pine sofa upholstered with a stuff slightlydissimilar from that on the table. The mattress of the sofa was unevenand its surface wrinkled, and old newspapers and pieces of brown paperhad been stowed away between it and the framework. The chief article offurniture was an effective walnut bookcase, the glass doors of whichwere curtained with red cloth. The window, wider than it was high, wasalso curtained with red cloth. The walls, papered in a saffron tint,bore framed advertisements and a few photographs of self-consciouspersons. The ceiling was as obscure as heaven; the floor tiled, with alist rug in front of the steel fender.

I put my overcoat on the sofa, picked up the candle and glanced at thebooks in the corner: Lavater's indestructible work, a paper-covered_Whitaker_, the _Licensed Victuallers' Almanac, Johnny Ludlow_, theillustrated catalogue of the Exhibition of 1856, _Cruden's Concordance_,and seven or eight volumes of _Knight's Penny Encyclopaedia_. While I wasporing on these titles I heard movements overhead--previously there hadbeen no sound whatever--and with guilty haste I restored the candle tothe table and placed myself negligently in front of the fire.

"Now don't let me see ye up here any more till I fetch ye!" said awoman's distant voice--not crossly, but firmly. And then, crossly: "Beoff with ye now!"

Reluctant boots on the stairs! Jos Myatt entered to me. He did not speakat first; nor did I. He avoided my glance. He was still wearing thecut-away coat with the line of mud up the back. I took out my watch, notfor the sake of information, but from mere nervousness, and the sight ofthe watch reminded me that it would be prudent to wind it up.

"Better not forget that," I said, winding it.

"Ay!" said he, gloomily. "It's a tip." And he wound up his watch; alarge, thick, golden one.

This watch-winding established a basis of intercourse between us.

"I hope everything is going on all right," I murmured.

"What dun ye say?" he asked.

"I say I hope everything is going on all right," I repeated louder, andjerked my head in the direction of the stairs, to indicate the placefrom which he had come.

I explained to him that I never took alcohol. It was not quite true, butit was as true as most general propositions are.

"Neither me!" he said shortly, after a pause.

"You're a teetotaller too?" I showed a little involuntary astonishment.

He put forward his chin.

"What do _you_ think?" he said confidentially and scornfully. It wasprecisely as if he had said: "Do you think that anybody but a born asswould _not_ be a teetotaller, in my position?"

I sat down on a chair.

"Take th' squab, mester," he said, pointing to the sofa. I took it.

He picked up the candle; then dropped it, and lighted a lamp which wason the mantelpiece between his vases of blue glass. His movements werevery slow, hesitating and clumsy. Blowing out the candle, which smokedfor a long time, he went with the lamp to the bookcase. As the key ofthe bookcase was in his right pocket and the lamp in his right hand hehad to change the lamp, cautiously, from hand to hand. When he openedthe cupboard I saw a rich gleam of silver from every shelf of it exceptthe lowest, and I could distinguish the forms of ceremonial cups withpedestals and immense handles.

"I suppose these are your pots?" I said.

"Ay!"

He displayed to me the fruits of his manifold victories. I could see himstraining along endless cinder-paths and highroads under hot suns, hisgreat knees going up and down like treadles amid the plaudits and howlsof vast populations. And all that now remained of that glory was thesedebased and vicious shapes, magnificently useless, grossly ugly, withtheir inscriptions lost in a mess of flourishes.

"Ay!" he said again, when I had fingered the last of them.

"A very fine show indeed!" I said, resuming the sofa.

He took a penny bottle of ink and a pen out of the bookcase, and also,from the lowest shelf, a bag of money and a long narrow account book.Then he sat down at the table and commenced accountancy. It was clearthat he regarded his task as formidable and complex. To see himreckoning the coins, manipulating the pen, splashing the ink, scratchingthe page; to hear him whispering consecutive numbers aloud, andmuttering mysterious anathemas against the untamable naughtiness offigures--all this was painful, and with the painfulness of a simpleexercise rendered difficult by inaptitude and incompetence. I wanted tojump up and cry to him: "Get out of the way, man, and let me do it foryou! I can do it while you are wiping hairs from your pen on yoursleeve." I was sorry for him because he was ridiculous--and even moregrotesque than ridiculous. I felt, quite acutely, that it was a shamethat he could not be for ever the central figure of a field of mud,kicking a ball into long and grandiose parabolas higher than gasometers,or breaking an occasional leg, surrounded by the violent affection ofhearts whose melting-point was the exclamation, "Good old Jos!" I feltthat if he must repose his existence ought to have been so contrivedthat he could repose in impassive and senseless dignity, like a mountainwatching the flight of time. The conception of him tracing symbols in aledger, counting shillings and sixpences, descending to arithmetic, andsuffering those humiliations which are the invariable preliminaries tolegitimate fatherhood, was shocking to a nice taste for harmoniousfitness.... What, this precious and terrific organism, this slave with aspecialty--whom distant towns had once been anxious to buy at theprodigious figure of five hundred pounds--obliged to sit in a meanchamber and wait silently while the woman of his choice encountered thesupreme peril! And he would "soon be past football!" He was "thirty-fourif a day!" It was the verge of senility! He was no longer worth fivehundred pounds. Perhaps even now this jointed merchandise was only worthtwo hundred pounds! And "they"--the shadowy directors, who could notkick a ball fifty feet and who would probably turn sick if they broke aleg--"they" paid him four pounds a week for being the hero of a quarterof a million of people! He was the chief magnet to draw fifteen thousandsixpences and shillings of a Saturday afternoon into a company's cashbox, and here he sat splitting his head over fewer sixpences andshillings than would fill a half-pint pot! Jos, you ought in justice tohave been Jose, with a thin red necktie down your breast (instead of aline of mud up your back), and embroidered breeches on those miraculouslegs, and an income of a quarter of a million pesetas, and thelanguishing acquiescence of innumerable mantillas. Every moment you weregetting older and stiffer; every moment was bringing nearer the momentwhen young men would reply curtly to their doddering elders: "JosMyatt--who was '_e?_"

The putting away of the ledger, the ink, the pen and the money was asexasperating as their taking out had been. Then Jos, always too largefor the room, crossed the tiled floor and mended the fire. A poker wasmore suited to his capacity than a pen. He glanced about him, uncertainand anxious, and then crept to the door near the foot of the stairs andlistened. There was no sound; and that was curious. The woman who wasbringing into the world the hero's child made no cry that reached usbelow. Once or twice I had heard muffled movements not quiteoverhead--somewhere above--but naught else. The doctor and Jos's sisterseemed to have retired into a sinister and dangerous mystery. I couldnot dispel from my mind pictures of what they were watching and whatthey were doing. The vast, cruel, fumbling clumsiness of Nature, herlack of majesty in crises that ought to be majestic, her incurableindignity, disgusted me, aroused my disdain, I wanted, as a philosopherof all the cultures, to feel that the present was indeed a majesticcrisis, to be so esteemed by a superior man. I could not. Though thecrisis possibly intimidated me somewhat, yet, on behalf of Jos Myatt, Iwas ashamed of it. This may be reprehensible, but it is true.

He sat down by the fire and looked at the fire. I could not attempt tocarry on a conversation with him, and to avoid the necessity for anytalk at all, I extended myself on the sofa and averted my face,wondering once again why I had accompanied the doctor to Toft End. Thedoctor was now in another, an inaccessible world. I dozed, and from mydoze I was roused by Jos Myatt going to the door on the stairs.

"Jos," said a voice. "It's a girl."

Then a silence.

I admit there was a flutter in my heart. Another soul, another formedand unchangeable temperament, tumbled into the world! Whence?Whither?... As for the quality of majesty--yes, if silver trumpets hadannounced the advent, instead of a stout, aproned woman, the momentcould not have been more majestic in its sadness. I say "sadness," whichis the inevitable and sole effect of these eternal and banal questions,"Whence? Whither?"

I thought: "Stirling will not be very long now, and we can departhome." I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to two. But Stirling didnot appear, nor was there any message from him or sign. I had to submitto the predicament. As a faint chilliness from the window affected myback I drew my overcoat up to my shoulders as a counterpane. Through agap between the red curtains of the window I could see a star blazing.It passed behind the curtain with disconcerting rapidity. The universewas swinging and whirling as usual.

VII

Sounds of knocking disturbed me. In the few seconds that elapsed beforeI could realize just where I was and why I was there, the summoningknocks were repeated. The early sun was shining through the red blind. Isat up and straightened my hair, involuntarily composing my attitude sothat nobody who might enter the room should imagine that I had beenother than patiently wide-awake all night. The second door of theparlour--that leading to the bar-room of the Foaming Quart--was open,and I could see the bar itself, with shelves rising behind it and theupright handles of a beer-engine at one end. Someone whom I could notsee was evidently unbolting and unlocking the principal entrance to theinn. Then I heard the scraping of a creaky portal on the floor.

"Well, Jos lad!"

It was the voice of the little man, Charlie, who had spoken with Myatton the football field.

"Come in quick, Charlie. It's cowd [cold]," said the voice of Jos Myatt,gloomily.

The two men passed together behind the bar, and so within my vision.Charlie had a grey muffler round his neck; his hands were far in hispockets and seemed to be at strain, as though trying to prevent hisupper and his lower garments from flying apart. Jos Myatt was extremelydishevelled. In the little man's demeanour towards the big one there wasnow none of the self-conscious pride in the mere fact of acquaintancethat I had noticed on the field. Clearly the two were intimate friends,perhaps relatives. While Jos was dispensing the gin, Charlie said, in alow tone:

"One come at summat after one o'clock, and th' other between five andsix. I had for fetch old woman Eardley to help. It were more than ahandful for Susannah and th' doctor."

Astonishing, that I should have slept through these events!

"How is her?" asked Charlie, quietly, as it were casually. I think thisappearance of casualness was caused by the stoic suppression of thesymptoms of anxiety.

"Her's bad," said Jos, briefly.

"And I am na' surprised," said Charlie. And he lifted the glass."Well--here's luck." He sipped the gin, savouring it on his tongue likea connoisseur, and gradually making up his mind about its quality. Thenhe took another sip.

"Hast seen her?"

"I seed her for a minute, but our Susannah wouldna' let me stop i' th'room. Her was raving like."

"Missis?"

"Ay!"

"And th' babbies--hast seen _them_?"

"Ay! But I can make nowt out of 'em. Mrs Eardley says as her's neverseen no finer."

"Doctor gone?"

"That he has na'! He's bin up there all the blessed night, in hisshirt-sleeves. I give him a stiff glass o' whisky at five o'clock andthat's all as he's had."

Charlie finished his gin. The pair stood silent.

"Well," said Charlie, striking his leg. "Swelp me bob! It fair beats me!Twins! Who'd ha'thought it? Jos, lad, thou mayst be thankful as it isna'triplets. Never did I think, as I was footing it up here this morning,as it was twins I was coming to!"

"Hast got that half quid in thy pocket?"

"What half quid?" said Charlie, defensively.

"Now then. Chuck us it over!" said Jos, suddenly harsh and overbearing.

"I laid thee half quid as it 'ud be a wench," said Charlie, doggedly.

"Thou'rt a liar, Charlie!" said Jos. "Thou laidst half a quid as itwasna' a boy."

"Nay, nay!" Charlie shook his head.

"And a boy it is!" Jos persisted.

"It being a lad _and_ a wench," said Charlie, with a judicial air, "andme 'aving laid as it 'ud be a wench, I wins." In his accents and hisgestures I could discern the mean soul, who on principle never paiduntil he was absolutely forced to pay. I could see also that Jos Myattknew his man.

"Thou laidst me as it wasna' a lad," Jos almost shouted. "And a lad itis, I tell thee."

"_And_ a wench!" said Charlie; then shook his head.

The wrangle proceeded monotonously, each party repeating over and overagain the phrases of his own argument. I was very glad that Jos did notknow me to be a witness of the making of the bet; otherwise I shouldassuredly have been summoned to give judgment.

"Let's call it off, then," Charlie suggested at length. "That'll settleit. And it being twins--"

"Nay, thou old devil, I'll none call it off. Thou owes me half a quid,and I'll have it out of thee."

"Well, then! Th' wench is thy eldest child. That's law, that is. Andwhat was us betting about, Jos lad? Us was betting about thy eldest andno other. I'll admit as I laid it wasna' a lad, as thou sayst. And it_wasna'_ a lad. First come is eldest, and us was betting about eldest."

Charlie stared at the father in triumph.

Jos Myatt pushed roughly past him in the narrow space behind the bar,and came into the parlour. Nodding to me curtly, he unlocked thebookcase and took two crown pieces from a leathern purse which lay nextto the bag. Then he returned to the bar and banged the coins on thecounter with fury.

He was clearly accustomed to an occasional violence of demeanour fromJos Myatt, and felt no fear. But he was wrong in feeling no fear. He hadnot allowed, in his estimate of the situation, for the exasperatedcondition of Jos Hyatt's nerves under the unique experiences of thenight.

Jos's face twisted into a hundred wrinkles and his hand seized Charlieby the arm whose hand held the coins.

"Her's gone!" the woman feebly whimpered. "Like that!" with a vaguemovement of the hand indicating suddenness. Then she burst into wildsobs and rushed madly back whence she had come, and the sound of hersobs diminished as she ascended the stairs, and expired altogether inthe distant shutting of a door.

The men looked at each other.

Charlie restored the crown-pieces to the counter and pushed them towardsJos.

Little Charlie gazed up at him sadly, plaintively, for what seemed along while.

"It's good-bye to th' First League, then, for Knype!" he tragicallymuttered, at length.

VIII

Dr Stirling drove the car very slowly back to Bursley. We glided gentlydown into the populous valleys. All the stunted trees were coated withrime, which made the sharpest contrast with their black branches and theblack mud under us. The high chimneys sent forth their black smokecalmly and tirelessly into the fresh blue sky. Sunday had descended onthe vast landscape like a physical influence. We saw a snake of childrenwinding out of a dark brown Sunday school into a dark brown chapel. Andup from the valleys came all the bells of all the temples of all thedifferent gods of the Five Towns, chiming, clanging, ringing, eachinsisting that it alone invited to the altar of the one God. And priestsand acolytes of the various cults hurried occasionally along, in silkhats and bright neckties, and smooth coats with folded handkerchiefssticking out of the pockets, busy, happy and self-important, theconvinced heralds of eternal salvation: no doubt nor hesitation as toany fundamental truth had ever entered their minds. We passed through along, straight street of new red houses with blue slate roofs, all gatedand gardened. Here and there a girl with her hair in pins and a roughbrown apron over a gaudy frock was stoning a front step. And half-waydown the street a man in a scarlet jersey, supported by two women inblue bonnets, was beating a drum and crying aloud: "My friends, you maydie to-night. Where, I ask you, where--?" But he had no friends; noteven a boy heeded him. The drum continued to bang in our rear.

I enjoyed all this. All this seemed to me to be fine, seemed to throwoff the true, fine, romantic savour of life. I would have alterednothing in it. Mean, harsh, ugly, squalid, crude, barbaric--yes, butwhat an intoxicating sense in it of the organized vitality of a vastcommunity unconscious of itself! I would have altered nothing even inthe events of the night. I thought of the rooms at the top of thestaircase of the Foaming Quart--mysterious rooms which I had not seenand never should see, recondite rooms from which a soul had slipped awayand into which two had come, scenes of anguish and of frustrated effort!Historical rooms, surely! And yet not a house in the hundreds of housespast which we slid but possessed rooms ennobled and made august byhappenings exactly as impressive in their tremendous inexplicableness.

The natural humanity of Jos Myatt and Charlie, their fashion ofcomporting themselves in a sudden stress, pleased me. How else shouldthey have behaved? I could understand Charlie's prophetic dirge over theruin of the Knype Football Club. It was not that he did not feel thetragedy in the house. He had felt it, and because he had felt it he haduttered at random, foolishly, the first clear thought that ran into hishead.

Stirling was quiet. He appeared to be absorbed in steering, and lookedstraight in front, yawning now and again. He was much more fatigued thanI was. Indeed, I had slept pretty well. He said, as we swerved intoTrafalgar Road and overtook the aristocracy on its way to chapel andchurch:

"Well, ye let yeself in for a night, young man! No mistake!"

He smiled, and I smiled.

"What's going to occur up there?" I asked, indicating Toft End.

"What do you mean?"

"A man like that--left with two babies!"

"Oh!" he said. "They'll manage that all right. His sister's a widow.She'll go and live with him. She's as fond of those infants already asif they were her own."

We drew up at his double gates.

"Be sure ye explain to Brindley," he said, as I left him, "that it isn'tmy fault ye've had a night out of bed. It was your own doing. I'm goingto get a bit of sleep now. See you this evening, Bob's asked me tosupper."

A servant was sweeping Bob Brindley's porch and the front door was open.I went in. The sound of the piano guided me to the drawing-room.Brindley, the morning cigarette between his lips, was playing one ofMaurice Ravel's "L'heure espagnole." He held his head back so as to keepthe smoke out of his eyes. His children in their blue jerseys werebuilding bricks on the carpet.

Without ceasing to play he addressed me calmly:

"You're a nice chap! Where the devil have you been?"

And one of the little boys, glancing up, said, with roguish, imitativeinnocence, in his high, shrill voice:

"Where the del you been?"

MIMI

I

On a Saturday afternoon in late October Edward Coe, a satisfactoryaverage successful man of thirty-five, was walking slowly along theKing's Road, Brighton. A native and inhabitant of the Five Towns in theMidlands, he had the brusque and energetic mien of the Midlands. Itcould be seen that he was a stranger to the south; and, in fact, he wasnow viewing for the first time the vast and glittering spectacle of thesouthern pleasure city in the unique glory of her autumn season. Aspectacle to enliven any man by its mere splendour! And yet Edward Coewas gloomy. One reason for his gloom was that he had just left abicycle, with a deflated back tyre, to be repaired at a shop in PrestonStreet. Not perhaps an adequate reason for gloom!... Well, that depends.He had been informed by the blue-clad repairer, after due inspection,that the trouble was not a common puncture, but a malady of the valvemysterious.

And the deflation was not the sole cause of his gloom. There wasanother. He was on his honeymoon. Understand me--not a honeymoon ofromance, but a real honeymoon. Who that has ever been on a realhoneymoon can look back upon the adventure and faithfully say that itwas an unmixed ecstasy of joy? A honeymoon is in its nature andconsequences so solemn, so dangerous, and so pitted with startlingsurprises, that the most irresponsible bridegroom, the mostlight-hearted, the least in love, must have moments of grave anxiety.And Edward Coe was far from irresponsible. Nor was he only a little inlove. Moreover, the circumstances of his marriage were peculiar, and hehad married a dark, brooding, passionate girl.

Mrs Coe was the younger of two sisters named Olive Wardle, well known inthe most desirable circles in the Five Towns. I mean those circles whereintellectual and artistic tastes are united with sound incomes andexcellent food delicately served. It will certainly be asked why twosisters should be named Olive. The answer is that though Olive One andOlive Two were treated as sisters, and even treated themselves assisters, they were not sisters. They were not even half-sisters. Theyhad first met at the age of nine. The father of Olive One, a widower,had married the mother of Olive Two, a widow. Olive One was the elder bya few months. Olive Two gradually allowed herself to be called Wardlebecause it saved trouble. They got on with one another very well indeed,especially after the death of both parents, when they became jointmistresses, each with a separate income, of a nice house at Sneyd, thefashionable residential village on the rim of the Five Towns. Like allpersons who live long together, they grew in many respects alike. Bothwere dark, brooding and passionate, and to this deep similarity asuperficial similarity of habits and demeanour was added. Only, whereasOlive One was rather more inclined to be the woman of the world, OliveTwo was rather more inclined to study and was particularly interested inthe theory of music.

They were sought after, naturally. And yet they had reached the age oftwenty-five before the world perceived that either of them was notsought after in vain. The fact, obvious enough, that Pierre EmileVaillac had become an object of profound human interest to OliveOne--this fact excited the world, and the world would have been stillmore excited had it been aware of another fact that was not at allobvious: namely, that Pierre Emile Vaillac was the cause of a secret andterrible breach between the two sisters. Vaillac, a widower with twoyoung children, Mimi and Jean, was a Frenchman, and a great authority onthe decoration of egg-shell china, who had settled in the Five Towns asexpert partner in one of the classic china firms at Longshaw. He wasundoubtedly a very attractive man.

Olive One, when the relations between herself and Vaillac weredeveloping into something unmistakable, had suddenly, and withoutwarning, accused Olive Two of poaching. It was a frightful accusation,and a frightful scene followed it, one of those scenes that are seldomforgiven and never forgotten. It altered their lives; but as they werewomen of considerable common sense and of good breeding, each did herbest to behave afterwards as though nothing had happened.

Olive Two did not convince Olive One of her innocence, because she didnot bring forward the supreme proof of it. She was too proud--in herbrooding and her mystery--to do so. The supreme proof was that at thistime she herself was secretly engaged to be married to Edward Coe, whohad conquered her heart with unimaginable swiftness a few weeks beforeshe was about to sit for a musical examination at Manchester. "Let ussay nothing till after my exam," she had suggested to her betrothed."There will be an enormous fuss, and it will put me off, and I shallfail, and I don't want to fail, and you don't want me to fail." Heagreed rapturously. Of course she did fail, nevertheless. But beingobstinate she said she would go in again, and they continued to make asecret of the engagement. They found the secret delicious. Then followedthe devastating episode of Vaillac. Shortly afterwards Olive One andVaillac were married, and then Olive Two was alone in the nice house.The examination was forgotten, and she hated the house. She wanted to bemarried; Coe also. But nothing had been said. Difficult to announce herengagement just then! The world would say that she had married out ofimitation, and her sister would think that she had married out of pique.Besides, there would be the fuss, which Olive Two hated. Already thefuss of her sister's marriage, and the effort at the wedding ofpretending that nothing had happened between them, had fatigued thenerves of Olive Two.

Then Edward Coe had had the brilliant and seductive idea of marrying insecret. To slip away, and then to return, saying, "We are married.That's all!" ... Why not? No fuss! No ceremonial! The accomplished fact,which simplifies everything!

It was, therefore, a secret honeymoon that Edward Coe was on;delightful--but surreptitious, furtive! His mental condition may be bestdescribed by stating that, though he was conscious of rectitude, hesomehow could not look a policeman in the face. After all, plain peopledo not usually run off on secret honeymoons. Had he acted wisely?Perhaps this question, presenting itself now and then, was the chiefcause of his improper gloom.

II

However, the spectacle of Brighton on a fine Saturday afternoon inOctober had its effect on Edward Coe--the effect which it has oneverybody. Little by little it inspired him with the joy of life, andstraightened his back, and put a sparkle into his eyes. And he wasfilled with the consciousness of the fact that it is a fine thing to bewell-dressed and to have loose gold in your pocket, and to eat, drink,and smoke well; and to be among crowds of people who are well-dressedand have loose gold in their pockets, and eat and drink and smoke well;and to know that a magnificent woman will be waiting for you at acertain place at a certain hour, and that upon catching sight of youher dark orbs will take on an enchanting expression reserved for youalone, and that she is utterly yours. In a word, he looked on the brightside of things again. It could not ultimately matter a bilberry whetherhis marriage was public or private.

He lit a cigarette gaily. He could not guess that untoward destiny waswaiting for him close by the newspaper kiosque.

A little girl was leaning against the palisade there, and gazingsomewhat restlessly about her. A quite little girl, aged, perhaps,eleven, dressed in blue serge, with a short frock and long legs, and asailor hat (H.M.S. _Formidable_), and long hair down her back, and amild, twinkling, trustful glance. Somewhat untidy, but nevertheless theimage of grace.

She saw him first. Otherwise he might have fled. But he was right uponher before he saw her. Indeed, he heard her before he saw her.

"Good afternoon, Mr Coe."

"Mimi!"

The Vaillacs were in Brighton! He had chosen practically the other endof the world for his honeymoon, and lo! by some awful clumsiness of fatethe Vaillacs were at the same end! The very people from whom he wishedto conceal his honeymoon until it was over would know all about it atthe very start! Relations between the two Olives would be still morestrained and difficult! In brief, from optimism he swung violently backto darkest pessimism. What could be worse than to be caught red-handedin a surreptitious honeymoon?

She noticed his confusion, and he knew that she noticed it. She was alittle girl. But she was also a little woman, a little Frenchwoman, whospoke English perfectly--and yet with a difference! They had flirtedtogether, she and Mr Coe. She had a new mother now, but for years shehad been without a mother, and she would receive callers at herfather's house (if he happened to be out) with a delicious imitation ofa practised hostess.

He raised his hat and shook hands and tried to play the game.

"What are you doing here, Mimi?" he asked.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she parried, laughing. And then, perceivinghis increased trouble, and that she was failing in tact, she went onrapidly, with a screwing up of the childish shoulders and somethingbetween a laugh and a grin: "It's my back. It seems it's not strong. Andso we've taken an ever so jolly little house for the autumn, because ofthe air, you know. Didn't you know?"

No, he did not know. That was the worst of strained relations. You werenot informed of events in advance.

"Where?" he asked.

"Oh!" she said, pointing. "That way. On the road to Rottingdean. Nearthe big girls' school. We came in on that lovely electric railway--alongthe beach. Have you been on it, Mr Coe?"

Terrible! Rottingdean was precisely the scene of his honeymoon. Thehazard of fate was truly appalling. He and his wife might have walkedone day straight into the arms of her sister! He went hot and cold.

"And where are the others?" he asked nervously.

"Mamma"--she coloured as she used this word, so strange on herlips--"mamma's at home. Father may come to-night. And Ada has brought ushere so that Jean can have his hair cut. He didn't want to come withoutme."

"Ada?"

"Ada's a new servant. She's just gone in there again to see how long thebarber will be." Mimi indicated a barber's shop opposite. "And I'mwaiting here," she added.

"Mimi," he said, in a confidential tone, "can you keep a secret?"

She grew solemn. "Yes." She smiled seriously. "What?"

"About meeting me. Don't tell anybody you've met me to-day. See?"

"Not Jean?"

"No, not Jean. But later on you can tell--when I give you the tip. Idon't want anybody to know just now."

It was a shame. He knew it was a shame. He deliberately flattered her byappealing to her as to a grown woman. He deliberately put a cajolingtone into his voice. He would not have done it if Mimi had not beenMimi--if she had been an ordinary sort of English girl. But she wasMimi. And the temptation was very strong. She promised, gravely. He knewthat he could rely on her.

Hurrying away lest Jean and the servant might emerge from the barber's,he remembered with compunction that he had omitted to show any curiosityabout Mimi's back.

III

The magnificent woman was to be waiting for him in the lounge of theRoyal York Hotel at a quarter to four. She was coming in to Brighton bythe Rottingdean omnibus, which function, unless the driver changes hismind, occurs once in every two or three hours. He, being under thenecessity of telephoning to London on urgent business, had hired abicycle and ridden in. Despite the accident to this prehistoric machine,he arrived at the Royal York half a minute before the Rottingdeanomnibus passed through the Old Steine and set down the magnificent womanhis wife. The sight of her stepping off the omnibus really did thrillhim. They entered the hotel together, and, accustomed though the RoyalYork is to the reception of magnificent women, Olive made a sensationtherein. As for him, he could not help feeling just as though he hadeloped with her. He could not help fancying that all the brilliantcompany in the lounge was murmuring under the strains of the band: "Thatjohnny there has certainly eloped with that splendid creature!"

They were having tea at a little Moorish table in the huge bay window ofthe lounge.

"No," he said. This was the first lie of his career as a husband. Buttruly he could not bring himself to give her the awful shock of tellingher that the Vaillacs were close at hand, that their secret wasdiscovered, and that their peace and security depended entirely upon thediscretion of little Mimi and upon their not meeting other Vaillacs.

"Then it's having that puncture that has upset you," his wife insisted.You see her feelings towards him were so passionate that she could notleave him alone. She was utterly preoccupied by him.

"No," he said guiltily.

"I'm afraid you don't very much care for this place," she went on,because she knew now that he was not telling her the truth, and thatsomething, indeed, was the matter.

"On the contrary," he replied, "I was informed that the finest tea andthe most perfect toast in Brighton were to be had in this lounge, andupon my soul I feel as if I could keep on having tea here for ever andever amen!"

He was trying to be gay, but not very successfully.

"I don't mean just here," she said. "I mean all this south coast."

"Well--" he began judicially.

"Oh! Ed!" she implored him. "_Do_ say you don't like it!"

"Why!" he exclaimed. "Don't _you_?"

She shook her head. "I much prefer the north," she remarked.

"Well," he said, "let's go. Say Scarborough."

"You're joking," she murmured. "You adore this south coast."

"Never!" he asserted positively.

"Well, darling," she said, "if you hadn't said first that you didn'tcare for it, of course I shouldn't have breathed a word--"

"Let's go to-morrow," he suggested.

"Yes." Her eyes shone.

"First train! We should have to leave Rottingdean at six o'clock a.m."

"How lovely!" she exclaimed. She was enchanted by this idea of acapricious change of programme. It gave such a sense of freedom, ofirresponsibility, of romance!

"More toast, please," he said to the waiter, joyously.

It cost him no effort to be gay now. He could not have been sad. Theworld was suddenly transformed into the best of all possible worlds. Hewas saved! They were saved! Yes, he could trust Mimi. By no chance wouldthey be caught. They would stick in their rooms all the evening, and onthe morrow they would be away long before the Vaillacs were up. Papa and"mamma" Vaillac were terrible for late rising. And when he had got hismagnificent Olive safe in Scarborough, or wherever their noses mightlead them, then he would tell her of the risk they had run.

They both laughed from mere irrational glee, and Edward Coe nearlyforgot to pay the bill. However, he did pay it. They departed from theRoyal York. He put his Olive into the returning Rottingdean omnibus, andthen hurried to get his repaired bicycle. He had momentarily quakedlest Mimi and company might be in the omnibus. But they were not. Theymust have left earlier, fortunately, or walked.

IV

When he was still about a mile away from Rottingdean, and the hour wasdusk, and he was walking up a hill, he caught sight of a girl leaning ona gate that led by a long path to a house near the cliffs. It was Mimi.She gave a cry of recognition. He did not care now--he was at easenow--but really, with that house so close to the road and so close toRottingdean, he and his Olive had practically begun their honeymoon onthe summit of a volcano!

Mimi was pensive. He felt remorse at having bound her to secrecy. Shewas so pensive, and so wistful, and her eyes were so loyal, that he felthe owed her a more complete confidence.

"I'm on my honeymoon, Mimi," he said. It gave him pleasure to tell her.

"Yes," she said simply, "I saw Auntie Olive go by in the omnibus."

That was all she said. He was thunderstruck, as much by her calmsimplicity as by anything else. Children were astounding creatures.

"Did Jean see her, or anyone?" he asked.

Mimi shook her head.

Then he told her they were leaving the next morning at six.

"Shall you be in a carriage?" she inquired.

"Yes."

"Oh! Do let me come out and see you go past," she pleaded. "Nobody elsein our house will be up till hours afterwards!... Do!"